As is well known to those in the garment printing art, there are a number of commercial multi-station rotary printing apparatus available for printing multiple color images on garments such as T-shirts. These multi-station rotary printing apparatus utilize a plurality of fixed pallets positioned radially around the vertical rotational axis for receiving a garment to be printed. The pallets with garments positioned thereon are rotated around the vertical axis of the rotary printing apparatus to individual print stations where selected print images are applied to the garment. With this type of multiple station printing apparatus, multiple color patterns utilizing up to eight (8) or more colors may be applied to the garment by "spot printing".
Historically, multiple station rotary printing apparatus have primarily been used for the aforesaid "spot-printing" of multiple color designs onto a garment which has been stretched over the pallet. This type of "spot-printing" of designs onto T-shirts is well known to anyone familiar with printed casual wear T-shirts such as those worn today by adults and children.
Although the prior art multi-station rotary printing apparatus works well for "spot-printing" of T-shirts and other similar garments, the multi-station rotary printing apparatus has not historically been capable of satisfactory multiple color printing of the entire surface (including the sleeves) of a T-shirt or similar garment due to shortcomings in the conventional pallet assembly. To some extent the shortcomings of conventional one-piece wooden pallets were overcome by the improved pallet assembly disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,819,559 to Szarka. The Szarka patent discloses an improved pallet assembly for full surface (less the sleeves), two-sided printing of fabrics and garments on a rotary-type multi-station printing apparatus. The pallet assembly of Szarka comprises a flat bottom pallet support member which has the same general shape as the metal pallet positioned thereon except that it is somewhat wider so that printing can be accomplished to the side edges of the garment positioned on the pallet. The pallet is removably secured to the support structure at one end with a keeper pin and at the other end with a ball-and-socket hinge assembly so that the pallet may be removed from the support structure after printing of one side of the garment. The garment and pallet are then rotated and resecured to the support structure in order to permit the garment positioned on the pallet to be printed on the other side. The pallet assembly suffers from shortcomings both due to its complexity as well as the functional shortcoming of not providing for "over-all" printing of the entire surface of a T-shirt or similar garment since the pallet assembly will not allow for surface printing onto the sleeves of the garment.